


Altered Options

by Sondra



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-29
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 22:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sondra/pseuds/Sondra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suppose it had been Blake, rather than Vila, on the Malodaar shuttle with Avon... An AU "What-if?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Altered Options

"Not enough," muttered Avon in mounting desperation. "Not nearly enough.  Damn it, what weighs 70 kilos?"

*Blake weighs 91 kilos, Avon.*

The man glared down at the box of flashing lights from which the response had come. "Not an option, Orac!" he thundered. "Try again."

*Perhaps if you were to redefine the problem—*  

"The problem hasn't changed, you cybernetic moron! How do we prevent this shuttle from crashing, thereby splattering the remains of two men and one excuse for a computer all over the surface of Malodaar?" 

With the same combination of outer placidity and inner menace that had characterized its earlier announcement, Orac replied, *You weigh 82 kilos, Avon.*

"Imbecile!  I asked how to prevent a crash and two deaths—or three, if I were inclined to be philosophically generous, which at the moment I most assuredly am not." 

*And I have told you how. Either solution I've proposed will result in no crash and only one death.*

With a sigh of exasperation Avon turned his back on Orac, then erupted again. "Where the hell is Blake? How long can it take to get rid of a bloody cargo jack?"

*Blake did not take the cargo jack with him,* came the unsolicited reply to his rhetorical query. *He left it behind when I answered your first question.*

"When you answered my ..?"  Avon froze in mid-sentence, his glance falling for the first time on the abandoned tool in the doorway. "That means he was still here. That means he heard. That means—oh, bloody hell!"

A palpably different sort of panic gripped Avon's voice now. "Blake!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. Hands shaking, he reached down and plucked from its hiding place the gun he had earlier smuggled aboard the ship. "Activate surveillance camera to monitor us, Orac," he called back over his shoulder as he sprinted from the control deck. "Keep working on the problem and find a solution."

*        *        *        *        *        *        *

About to enter the airlock, Blake looked back and saw Avon climbing frantically down the ladder to the cargo hold. Shouting the rebel leader's name and waving a gun, the man rushed toward him, his stride broken only for an instant by some object lying in his path...

Blake used that instant to palm open the airlock door and was palming it closed again from the inside when Avon's body came hurtling through the rapidly shrinking space and knocked him to the floor. 

They scrambled to their feet and found themselves face to face, midway between the door which led to safety and the door which led to doom. They eyed one another warily, then eyed the secondary ejection lever located beside the outer hatch.

As the rebel leader inched closer to it, his companion pointed the gun at him. "Get away from there, Blake," he ordered. "Get away from there now."

"Or what? You'll shoot me?"

"I'm not joking, Blake."

"Neither am I, Avon. Look, there's no other way. It's a question of simple mathematics. One of us has to go out that airlock or both of us are going to die. You've always said I'm the one dragging everyone else into danger, and you're right. Going after the tachyon funnel was my idea. That makes what's happened my responsibility. Just promise me you'll continue to fight the Federation."

"I promise you I won't!" 

Blake shrugged philosophically. "So be it." He placed his hand on the ejection lever and waited for Avon to leave.

But Avon didn't leave.

Precious seconds ticked by in silence. "This is madness," Blake said finally.

Avon chuckled. "For once we agree about something."

"We're losing valuable time!"

"Yes, we are." 

"Get out, Avon. I mean it. Ten seconds from now you had better be on the other side of that door."

"So that you can be on the other side of this one?"

"Damn it, use that icy logic of yours. There's no point in both of us dying."

At that, Avon's expression collapsed into an acknowledgement of defeat. "All right, you win" he murmured softly, tossed the gun aside and turned in apparent compliance with the rebel leader's wishes. 

Blake heaved a sigh of relief, his eyes tracking the discarded weapon. And in that split second of diminished vigilance, Avon made his move: He spun around, seized Blake by the shoulders and slammed him against the cargo hold door.

Blake reeled momentarily from the force of the blow, then looked up to see Avon lose his footing and fall backwards. Avon's arms flailed wildly over his head as he struggled ( _or did he?_ ) to regain his balance. Then the back of Avon's hand hit the ejection lever...

"No!" Blake cried as the hatch flew open, but the sound of his protest died in mid-scream... 

Died with the air ripped from his lungs...

Died with the light and warmth ripped from his soul...

Died with Avon who disappeared forever into the void.

 

There is a kind of knowledge deeply ingrained whose power can rival that of raw instinct: knowledge capable of replacing instinct in circumstances where instinct would prove disastrous. It was that kind of knowledge, born of long years of living in space, that came to Blake's rescue now and guided him through the seemingly never-ending seconds which followed... 

Stubbornly suppressing the urge to breathe...

Ruthlessly resisting the desire to burst back into the cargo hold...

Squeezing his lids shut to slow the evaporation of moisture from his eyes...

Ignoring the rising pressure in his chest, the pounding in his ears, the trickling of blood from his nose... 

Groping his way along the wall in total silence and self-imposed darkness to the open hatch and miraculously managing to locate the lever... 

Closing the hatch, then staggering back across the floor and tumbling out into the blessed relief of breathable air...

The whole agonizing process had lasted less than thirty seconds. Now breathing again, Blake nonetheless found himself momentarily unable to move, pierced to the core by the pain of his loss. But an instant later grief gave way to iron resolve, and that resolution sent him racing back to the control deck.

*        *        *        *        *        *        *

*Remaining flight time two minutes and thirty seconds,* droned Orac's voice.

Blake dropped into the pilot's seat, knocked the engine throttles wide open and felt the craft shudder as power surged in. The speed indicator began to climb steadily toward the safety of Mach fifteen...

It was only after he knew the danger was past and had locked the shuttle into an automatic course away from Malodaar that Blake realized Orac was still speaking. *Having defined the problem, the first step toward solution is the acquisition of data.* The statement startled him with its familiarity. Something he'd said long ago to Avon on the _London_ , which Avon must have had occasion to repeat in the computer's presence...

*Avon found the data, but he failed to recognize its significance, forcing me, despite my disinclination, to compensate for his amazing lack of observation.*

"Please, Orac, not now," Blake begged hoarsely. 

*It was that small piece of plastic lying on the floor. When he saw how heavy it was, he should have asked himself why. If he'd asked himself why, he would have realized, as I then did, how Egrorian sabotaged the ship.*

An image of Avon kicking briefly at that seemingly insignificant object, then abandoning the effort in his frenzied desire to reach the airlock flitted through Blake's mind. "What?!" he exploded, whirrling on Orac. 

Oblivious to the rebel leader's passionate outburst, the computer pressed on. *It was high tensile plastic. It couldn't have weighed that much unless something were embedded in it. A speck of neutron material, to be precise. Had Avon realized this, he would have also realized that by ejecting that plastic from the ship, the problem of how to achieve escape velocity would have been solved.*

All the color drained from Blake's face as the full implication of what he was hearing sank in. "You didn't have to die, Avon," he whispered. "Neither of us had to die."

*The one link in the chain of data which I cannot seem to process,* continued Orac, *is why an entity of Avon's relatively high intelligence failed to understand this. Can you enlighten me on this point?*

But the only reply the computer received was the sound of Blake sobbing quietly as the shuttle sailed on through the blackness of space. 

 

                   "Sentiment breeds weakness. Let it get a hold of you and you are dead."                                                                                                                                                    — Kerr Avon ( _Terminal_ )


End file.
